Machinery and methods employed in the manufacturing industry have been continuously shaped by a number of market and business forces. For example, many manufactured products today are relatively more complex than those in the past, as high technology electronics have proliferated to become integrated even into commonly used consumer goods. Flexibility is key to a manufacturer's survival, as smaller lot runs of products having different feature sets must be produced on the same production line. And while the list of feature offerings continually grows, the opposite is true for the size in which they are packaged, because miniaturization and portability are important market factors as well. Add to the mix the fact that price demands have forced a greater emphasis on efficiency to the extent that processing station cycle time is scrutinized to a fraction of a second.
To keep pace with these evolving factors manufacturers are continually striving to replace manual operations with highly-complex and processor-controlled automated systems. Successful efforts have also been employed to reengineer the factory to assemble all components just-in-time instead of batch processing. Product design and process capability analyses are directed toward building quality into the process rather than inspecting it into the product. Ultimately, the measure of quality for an entire manufacturing operation depends on the quality of each of its numerous process steps.
These and other recent improvements in the art have significantly enhanced the manufacturer's ability to manufacture quality products at a competitive price. It is to the furthering of those efforts that the embodiments of the present invention are directed.